shadrachwhite's posterous

I have been and active participant in the Social Net for almost 3yrs now.  I started with MySpace but never really used it, then I heard about LinkedIN on an Alaska Airlines flight to San Jose in 2007.  At first I reacted like most employers do and saw it as a threat to retaining my staff and tried to block access at the firewall.  Then a colleague Kevin Ells working in our marketing dept. started teaching me about SEO so I started embracing it a little more.  Then I read CrushIt by Gary V. and turned 180 degrees the opposite direction.  I started leading my company as an executive sponsor for the complete embrace of Web2.0.  We encouraged everyone to join and participate in FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIN and our newly minted company blogs.  We did webinars, workshops and still do an occasional and informal lunch time learning hour to get people involved.  We have significantly increase our natural rankings for keywords related to our industry.  We appear on page1 as a natural hit for many of the most searched terms in our industry.

BLOGS
Nexus ECM: http://nexusecmsolutionsconference.wordpress.com/

ECM Project Managers: http://ProjectManagementForECM.wordpress.com

ECM Systems Engineers: http://ECMTechnicalExpertise.wordpress.com

ECM Solutions: http://IndependentIntegratorsOfECM.wordpress.com

ECM Developers: http://SoftwareDevelopmentForECM.wordpress.com

ECM Products: http://ProductsAndSolutionsForECM.wordpress.com

ECM Support: http://ECMTechnicalSupport.wordpress.com

ECM News: http://newandgoodinecm.wordpress.com

Twitter
Nexus ECM Twitter feed http://twitter.com/nexusecm
ImageSource Twitter feed http://twitter.com/imagesourceinc
ILINX Capture Twitter feed http://twitter.com/ilinxcapture
ECM Support Twitter feed http://twitter.com/ecmsupport

Facebook

http://facebook.com/imagesourceinc

http://facebook.com/ilinxcapture

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/imagesourceinc

I have seen my personal attitude towards engagement and privacy ebb and flow with my other social activities and life experiences.  I don’t think it’s all or nothing, on or off.  For me it depends on business cycles when I am super busy and there is lots of sales or management related activity I am less engaged.  When I have more down time my activity spikes.  I think the same could be applied to what you may be going through personally in your family, marriage, raising kids, emergency or life altering events.  Being social on the net is just as dependent on your current life circumstance, mood and interests as it is in the real world.

My Links

http://www.linkedin.com/in/shadrachwhite

http://twitter.com/shadrachwhite

http://facebook.com/shadrachwhite

I have been hosting some Social Media training for our employees at ImageSource.  The feedback and adoption has been pretty good, but there is the common initial pushback – “I don’t have time for this” or “I can’t read this twitter stuff” and there are privacy concerns about having work bleed into personal.  While I understand the initial pushback, I am working hard to dispel some of the uncertainty about the tools.  We are using Wordpress for blogs, twitter for micro-blogging and we have a couple of Fan sites on Facebook

Curtis Silver posted a great blog September 2009 on the subject of FUD and Social Media

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/09/social-media-fighting-the-fear

I am starting to get through with some of the basic concepts and upside that Web2.0 tools provide.  Especially with the Sales staff who I am working to convince that their personal BRAND as a Professional and our Corporate BRAND is something to be proud of and to share without the limitations of time, geography or traditional marketing costs and boundaries.

›          We will use it to build relationships

›          We are creating brand awareness

›          We are positioning ourselves as experts in the industry

›          We can more easily network with other industry professionals

›          We build trust with our customer partners

›          We can have multiple, quick, conversations and corporate updates

We have been using the following graphic as a way to articulate how the pieces fit together.  Websites and metadata / tagging driving search engine optimization with the help of our blogs and tweets.  Also publishing video using YouTube and Ustream.  We are using URL shorteners / shrinkers to save space in blogs and twitter messages.

If you’re a company that is interested to get a similar movement started but don’t know where to begin please feel free to contact me via http://twitter.com/shadrachwhite and follow the twitter list http://twitter.com/#/list/shadrachwhite/imagesource see how we progress in our efforts.  The more activity you see the more successful we have been in getting people on board.